


If on a winter's night, two travellers

by OldLace



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: AU, Academy Era, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Holiday Angst?, Humor, K/S Advent Calendar 2015, M/M, Travel, Unsarcastic use of endearments
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-14
Updated: 2015-12-14
Packaged: 2018-05-06 19:40:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,822
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5428268
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OldLace/pseuds/OldLace
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Spock is not the first of his kind while Jim is not the rebel genius who took Starfleet by storm. One night before the holidays, they are two passengers on a shuttle bound for New York. Their lives still manage to intertwine.</p>
            </blockquote>





	If on a winter's night, two travellers

**Author's Note:**

> Second part to be posted within the day. Please bear with me. Thank you!
> 
> Title is with apologies to Italo Calvino and under protest by my beloved beta, orangepotatoe. All sorts of mistakes are mine. Written for K/S Advent Calendar 2015.

“Man, you don’t look so hot.”

Spock would have hitched an eyebrow or two at the absurdity of the comment —the shivers wracking his body felt like they were the sufficient cause of the tremors of the shuttle he was in and not the turbulence— he knew it was obvious from plain sight. He could have pointed out that “looking hot” has a wide spectrum of meanings. He could, however, _not do these things_ , precisely because he was not feeling well, and therein lay the crux of the matter. It was easier to concede that he had sufficient knowledge of human colloquialism what the man meant, close his eyes, and not answer at all.

From Spock’s slightly peeking eye, he can see the man’s scrunched face three empty seats away from his, twin bright, blue eyes narrowing at him in suspicion. “No, really, you look like shit— no offense meant,” and this _almost_ undid Spock’s resolve to keep his retorts to himself, but he was weak at the moment, not weak-willed. “You sure you don’t need something?” Spock nodded.

If he wasn’t compromised, perhaps he would have thought about the offer instead of dismissing it immediately. After all, they were the only two beings in this part of the shuttle, and they have approximately two hours and fifty-three minutes before they land. Perhaps, it would be wise, were he to collapse of hypother—

“Suit yourself,” the man said flatly. “Just warn me if you’re going to projectile vomit. Have had enough of that in my very short stint here, so, uh, yeah.” That seemed to have been the end of it. There were definite disadvantages to dependence on a total stranger: the sharing of personal information, making profuse-enough thanks, making ‘small talk’ that humans were so fond of, especially nearing the holidays.  Doing so would consequently entail explaining why he was wearing only his uniform grays and a knit hat that covered his head and ears on the last shuttle ride to New York at four hundred hours. As it were, Spock was not inclined on sharing.

And from the silence that ensued, the man appeared not to mind. Spock allowed himself to look. He was resting his chin on a huge backpack rested on his lap, shoulders hunched, arms hugging the bag to himself. His forehead was creased and his eyes were narrow slits, like he wanted to be along the lights and movement that zoomed past on the other side of the glass pane window across them.

“I—” Spock started. He didn’t know what to say, and that had always been his problem. Just two days ago, he could see disappointment in his mother’s eyes when she asked him if he was going to take home any friends. She wanted him to fit in, and she was right, made a logical argument about wasted opportunities. _You’re not in Vulcan anymore, honey_. His mother did not have all the data, but he wanted to try for her. It was why he was making this trip to New York. It was the least he could do. “I admit I am not.”

The man looked startled, craning his neck from to view him warily. “You aren’t what?”

“Hot.”

The man snorted. “Well, you are. But that has variable definitions.”

Spock tugged the hat lower, even if he has no purpose in doing so. He had learned that humans are often unnerved by immobility— a mistake he had been reprimanded and had apologized for, once by his Tactics professor on an apparently ‘unnerving’ tutoring session. “Yes, but I meant it literally. Temperature-wise.”

“Oh,” he said. “You need a sweater or something?”

Spock bristled. “No,” he said.

“Okay, great,” the man said, patting the bag in his lap thrice. “Because I’m not offering. Packed my shit up tight and I’d rather not have them explode in my face spend the short travel time punching them all back in.”

Three hours is not a short time, Spock wanted to argue. When he was six years and three months old, he asked his mother why it took so long to travel in Earth when they have reached Earth from Vulcan in a disproportionately short time.  They were on a shuttle from San Francisco to Canada where his mother's relatives were and it took them four shaky hours before landing. _Just a little field trip between you and I while your father works, Spock_ , she'd said. Her answer was that it was because humans had looked up from the moment they were able to stand. They kept reaching upwards, heavenwards, until they reached the skies and colonized the stars and neglected the ground they sprouted from.

_Illogical_ , he’d told his mother, and she'd laughed at him then, before patting his nose lightly with a finger. _That’s humans for you_ , she said, mussing his tidy hair. _Sometimes the closer distances are harder to reach._ The wistful, faraway look in her eye was indecipherable to Spock then, but she snapped from her daze soon enough to wrap him in an extra sweater.

Spock looked at the man. His face was propped sideways with his cheek resting on his bag like he was guarding secrets inside the zipper. Spock cleared his throat. “You are aware the words ‘explode’ while referring to the contents of your bag is a prohibited due to the Anti-Terrorism Act in—”

His reply was cut off by a grunt. “Yeah, but you just repeated it, so you’re my accomplice now.”

“It does not work that way.”

“Sure it does,” he said. The man’s eyes were open now. Electric blue dots staring at him even in the dim lighting in the shuttle. “You even said you had a hot thing under that jacket. I’ll testify to the police.”

“You are lying. And you cannot testify under oath as to what you do not know of.”

The man’s head lolled back, his eyes unmoving on Spock. The headrest was stiff and uncomfortable even to Spock’s sensibilities, but the man looks at rest, laid back. His eyes were unmoving at Spock. “But we can amend that,” he said, lowering his lashes and darting a tongue out to lick his lips.

Spock snapped his face away. “I prefer that you do not,” he said, keeping his voice steady despite the shivers travelling his spine.

He hears a faint chuckle, but he did not look in that direction again. “Again, suit yourself.”

He replayed the conversation in his head, and it sounded stilted on his part. Frustration bubbles through him, but he gently smoothed it over. He had watched various holos and had read numerous tomes on the account of social interaction for humans, but he remained largely unprepared for the bickering and the teasing of his colleagues at the Academy. Spock was in fact not a teenager anymore; he accomplished his compressed academic load at the Academy with prestigious honor. He had just published a paper from his brief work as a research assistant, and he was taking up the position of an Academy Instructor the following semester. Surely, he could handle a conversation with this singular human, the likes of whom will probably be grazing the classes that he will teach.

“And what do you care, anyway? We’re the only ones here,” the man said. His fingers tiptoed and flattened on the empty seat nearer Spock, and he leaned over as if attempting to crawl nearer or to beckon him Spock nearer with the challenging glint in his eye that was not there before. “I can say it whenever I want, I can say whatever I wanna say,” he said in a low drawl. “Explode spill off boom boom. _HOT_ —”

“You will cease this, Cadet,” Spock said, channelling all the authority he could muster from the cold. He realized he didn’t really notice the cold anymore, suffused as he is in warmth he did not know the source of.

“I’m not a cadet,” the man snapped coldly, and almost instantly, the moment was gone. Or he was perhaps impersonating Spock with an impersonal voice, but Spock remained dubious about that. In an instant, his body faced the opposite direction of Spock’s confused gaze, clinching their ill-advised conversation to a halt.

Spock should have been relieved by this. Instead, the whinging of the engines beneath them sounded louder than ever. The man was offended, Spock surmised, based on the straight back that now faced Spock. His welcoming and lax demeanor from the beginning completely vanished. It should not really matter; if the man was not a cadet, the probabilities of him ever meeting Spock again was low. He tapped the screen of his PADD with a trembling finger to check the time: it was fourty-three hundred. They had two and a half hours more before the shuttle lands in New York— sufficient time to devise an appropriate apology.

He closed his eyes and lowered his head. It wasn’t long before he heard the sound of footsteps falling away. In an instant, Spock was left alone. He slowed his breathing in an attempt to meditate and settle his muddled thoughts. Instead, the complete and utter silence inside the shuttle distracted and suffocated him. Without a warning, a weight pressed lightly on his shoulder. Atop his gray Starfleet jacket perched a black leather jacket.

“Shit, you’re practically blue and green.” His hands are then captured and enveloped in another’s, and Spock feels hot breath ghosting over his fingers. The man rubbed his clasped hands roughly between his palms, and then his covered shoulders in an up-and-down motion. Spock held his breath, refused to look at him; the proximity between their faces were not conducive to face to face interaction and might induce the cramping of their necks. “Went back there at the cockpit and they said the goddamn environmental controls are broken. We’re practically moving at fuck-fast kilometers during Christmas day and it’s as cold in here as outside. Happy holidays to us, huh?”

Spock kept silent, careful not to make any more mistakes. He settled for looking at the man —boy— instead. He must not have been older by Spock. Underneath the jacket he’d given Spock, a plain white cotton t-shirt flimsily covered his taut, muscled arms and torso. A cadet’s body, if Spock was correct.

“Look, uh,” he said, swaggered in a seat beside Spock, not even bothering to put his straps on. The bag was put aside, in favor of him lifting and crossing his legs and then tucking them under each other. He was back to his carefree countenance in less than five minutes. In contrast, his tone was slow and calming. “You can’t just pull rank on people like that, uh—”

“Spock,” he said.

“Spock, you can’t just pull rank on people like that. Even if I was a cadet.”

“Why?” For a moment, Spock remembered the times he had asked his mother with the same intonation. He felt foolish for asking, for being out of depth after all this time.

“People don’t make friends by telling other people how much they outrank them.”

“Ah,” Spock said. If this were indeed true, it will continue to befuddle Spock how these minute details of human social rules that are so important but are unwritten in any of the books he had read. Spock took note of it, noting to ask his mother to verify for him. Meanwhile, he wanted to test his hypothesis. “But are you?”

“Maybe I don’t like labels,” he said, shrugging, before quirking his head again to address Spock. “Wait,” Spock?” His eyes scan the ceiling in thought. “Jewish? Happy Chanukah then.”

“Vulcan. Although I am Jewish in part as well.”

“Really?!” Blue eyes expanded exceptionally wide and fast, but that might only have been Spock’s perception due to Jim’s face nearing to his by approximately two inches. He searched Spock’s face of evidence of this revelation, as if Spock had just proved Darwin’s theory of evolution right before his eyes. Hands lurched forward as if to reveal the ears under his hat, but they gripped the leather jacket hanging on Spock’s frame before sliding down. The grin he was flashing reminds Spock of the Cheshire cat that were illustrated in his childhood storybooks. “There are Jewish Vulcans?!”

“Yes.” Spock’s voice drifted off, not wanting to elaborate further. “Perhaps _I_ do not like labels.”

The man/boy looked at him questioningly at first before, a look of surprise passing in his face before laughing aloud. “Okay, touché, you wild desert beast,” he said, still grinning. Spock’s eyebrow involuntarily twitch in affront. “You livin’ it up in New York for Christmas then? Don’t tell me: there’s a Vulcan Chinatown there?”

“What that means, I do not even want to understand,” Spock deadpanned, which was met with another raucous laughter from his seatmate. The deep sounds drawn tightly from his stomach vibrated and ricocheted off the metal walls until only his laughter can be heard by Spock, not the whirring engines or the warping surrounding.  “I am to visit my mother,” Spock said. As soon as he did, he suspected he had somehow been manipulated in sharing this information to a man whose name he did not even know. Spock peered cautiously at his seatmate and scanned for any hint of malice, but there was none. He was not even looking at Spock; his gaze trained at the blurry window outside with a soft smile fixed on his lips.

“Oh yeah? What a downer. You could have said you’d be visiting the President and I’d have believed you.”

“Mister, if someone told you they were visiting the President later and risking hypothermia in public transport, I advise you not to believe them.” Even Spock knew this was unusual behavior.

“Why not?” He asked, outraged, but still laughing. “Maybe the President’s had a heart attack, and I dunno, I’m his doctor or something. And it’s Jim,” he added, wiggling his bottom experimentally before sinking to his seat.

Spock tilted his head quizzically.

“Just Jim,” Jim said, waving off further inquiries.

“A most unusual name. Quite utilitarian.”

“Oh you bet your bangs I’m utilitarian,” he said, winking and flashing him a smile from his slumped form

“I hope the President may be able to find use of you after your deterioration due to hypothermia.”

“Gah,” he said, laughing and flailing his arms in defeat. “A Vulcan has humor and it’s sarcasm he learns sarcasm first, Jesus.” He then clutched Spock’s leather-covered arms in mock-outrage and shook him in his seat. “It could have been puns. Puns!”

For the rest of the one hour and fifty-nine minutes of travel time, they talk about nothing in particular. They pointedly did not talk about Vulcans or surnames, or destinations, or labels. Spock counted it as a victory; it was his first real understanding of the term ‘willing to take what he can get’ when Jim conquered when he prods and laughs and pokes and asks.

They stood at the hangar at the shuttle terminal in New York and Spock handed back the black leather jacket to Jim. The cold weather was sharp and biting, and Spock was no longer freezing. Jim shrugged it on easily, with the ease his every movements seemed to make.

“I am relieved you did not get hypothermia,” Spock said, when there was nothing left to say.

Jim just smiled. “Nah, I had worse weather,” he said, before leaning in to whisper. “Are you sure you don’t want me to check beneath the jacket?”

Spock tried to parse out his hidden meanings, but he did not find any. Jim’s brown lashes fanned slowly against his cheeks but there were no dilation evident in his eyes, his cheeks did not flush and his pulse beat gently beneath his skin. “Absolutely,” Spock said.

“Alright.” Jim sighed, but the smile on his face was unmistakeable before he turned around and waved him a salute as he strolled leisurely away from him and into the streets. From a distance, he can see Jim’s head tilted, like searching the heavens for directions and then walking along as if he found them. Spock allowed himself to remember — the sound of Jim’s giggle at his own jokes, his unsure, deeper ones at Spock’s non-jokes, the angle of the crinkles beside his eyes when he is beaming with a smile that lit his entire face and swayed his whole body in motion — let himself be awash of the pleasantness of it, to take them to the recesses of his mind. To turn around and move along.

Which was why it was a surprise to Spock to find him standing in the same Hovercar rental, five blocks away from the shuttleport they disembarked from.

 

***

 

_You’re not in Vulcan anymore, honey_ , Amanda had told him, and neither was she. Her invitation to Christmas dinner was extended to Spock since September, in fact. He’d missed Thanksgiving, but then he’d had the final results of his research to finalize. This is what he told her, but he was only proofreading the final draft, nevermind that he had impeccable grammar. _You’re not in Vulcan anymore, honey_ , she’d said, and Spock thought, yes they were on Earth, and on Earth, it is common practice to lie, so he did, in a fit of rebelliousness, do that. (Out of guilt, he sent her flowers.)

He was undecided in taking her offer until last night. Largely, he was unaffected by the holiday festivities. Laboratory work was routine, meeting with the research team was routine. There were no Secret Santas involved, and if there were, he’d have begged out of it.  Although he did get a gift out of Professor Castillo, one of the senior researchers involved in developing the quadrotriticale: a knit hat soft enough to touch and not irritate his ears. He thanked her profusely for it and for not giving her back anything in return, but she said she knitted for her grandchildren and had a lot of extra yardage.

Hordes of students coming and going from the Academy was routine, but the deserted buildings were not. When he was a student, he boarded the shuttlecraft to escape to the heat of Vulcan during holiday season as soon as his schedule permitted it. This year, the last days preceding Christmas, the white-walled corridors of the dormitories felt eerily silent like cathedrals in the night. There was no occurrence of snowfall but it was as if a blanket of quiet had settled over the streets of San Francisco. On Christmas Eve, he had productively taken his time settling in the Academy apartment units for instructors. Unwilling to brave the cold night after he had finished, he decided to call for his preferred Chinese restaurant. No one answered his call. He meditated unsuccessfully for one hour and twelve minutes, checked the boarding schedule for shuttles bound for New York, before hastily walking the distance to the shuttleport. He was able to grab the hat. He apparently forgot his license.

Hence, the hovercar agency refusing to loan him a car.

“I’m really sorry, sir. We aren’t authorized to loan our cars without any proof of—”

“There you are, sweetheart!” Jim’s face did not miss a beat. From when he opened the door to the reception area, an easy smile warmed his face immediately. “Sorry, sorry, I had to pee,” he said, coming to Spock’s side. “Anyway, where were we?”

“Sir,” the employee manning the counter turned to Jim with stiff regard. “Is he your—” The man on the counter looked at them pointedly.

Jim slipped his arm in Spock’s waist. “Spock here is most definitely _my_ ,” he said, waggling his eyebrows. Before Spock could issue any protests, Jim pecked a kiss to his cheek and whispered stealthily. _Play along,_ he said,and slid his license over the counter.

In Spock’s second and last year as a cadet in Starfleet, a persistent cadet majoring in Xenobotany had been gotten closer to him than anyone else had been able or willing to. She was kind with her smiles, had acquiesced to the companionable silence he preferred when he frequented the library. She touched his hand once, as she told a story— a flit of her fingers on his knuckles — but Spock read fear there, insecurity. He could not fathom the meaning, and eventually, the cadet lost interest.  It was a failure he was unwilling to admit. They had not progressed further than a brief contact, certainly not like how Jim pawed Spock’s left hip, his head is rested on Spock’s right shoulder.

The man scanned the license and slid it back to Jim, and then handed him an a PADD. “Okay, fill these papers up, sir, if you will. I will check out our remaining unit in the back. I’ll be back to assist you with your keys shortly.”

“What is the meaning of this, Jim?” Spock asked, as soon as he was sure the employee was out of hearing range.

“I heard all the fuss, and it’s no big deal, I can drive you where you’re going,” Jim said coolly, tapping in the information required in tiny digital boxes. His other arm coiled tightly on Spock’s lower back, as if it had every right to be wounded so tight in the first place.

Spock nodded. “I am gratified by your generosity.”

“Yeah, yeah. I better not get coals from Santa,” Jim grumbled, but the man was once again in the counter, double-checking the filled-up form. “Honey,” he added more loudly this time. “You know I’ve been a good boy all-year round.”

Anonymity has a potent effect, emboldening Spock’s thespian abilities to convincingly lower his mouth in an impression of a kiss behind Jim’s ear. “Am I sweetheart or am I honey?” When he whispered, his lips brushed against Jim’s skin and he could feel the hitch in Jim’s breathing against his cheek. “If we are to continue in this deception, you must set your details in order,” he said, and added thoughtfully, “My mother called me honey.”

“I only need your credit transfer, sirs,” said the man, pointedly not looking at them this time. Spock could see him steal a glance at the holo framed under the counter. A girl tucked her brown hair before sticking her tongue out to onlookers.

“I’m sticking to sweetheart then,” Jim said, poking a final dot on his own PADD.

The man looked up at them, visibly shaken. He rubbed his eye before grabbing the car key and handing them over to Jim. “Here you go sirs,” he said, “and Merry Christmas.”

“Same to you,” Jim said cheerfully, “but my husband’s Jewish,” and steered Spock by the waist towards the entrance.

 

***

 

Hardly anyone were out on the streets, even though it was past seven hundred. Fat lazy flakes fluttered from the sky, adding to the layers of blankets of snow that had accumulated overnight on the sidewalks, and it looked like it was not on anyone’s agenda to shovel them out just yet.

“Aw man. I hate saying goodbyes prematurely, you know? The next time you do it, it’s just awkward and you don’t have anything to say anymore.” Jim exemplified his speech to an admirable degree. He fidgeted the console of the car without so much as look in Spock’s general direction. Spock decided to end his misery by unstrapping his seatbelt with and audible pop, opened the car door and slid off to the snow covered gutter with a muffled thud.

They were parked in front of West 89th, centuries-old brownstones lay in a neat row, like teeth, and especially dripping in snowy enamel. Spock knocked at the passenger window to roll open. As it did, Jim appeared to rummage on the contents of one of his bag pocket. He found what he was looking for and shoved a short red stick in Spock’s face. “Chapstick! For your lips. They’re uh, a bit chapped. They need protection against the cold,” he said, confidence deteriorating by the second. Spock bit his tongue before it darted out to confirm Jim’s words. “Merry Christmas,” he said with a weak smile.

Spock took it between two fingers and examined it. Flakes started to pour down more drastically, one landing spectacularly on his nose. “Farewell, Jim, and thank you,” he said over the open window.

Jim shooed him away and pointed to Number 328. “Get in there fast, we don’t want you any bluer.”

“I am not blue. I am green.”

“Right,” Jim said, stifling his laugh with an ill-disguised cough. “‘Cause that what I was referring to. Guess I haven’t learned much of Vulcan anatomy yet,” Jim said, winking. Spock huffed, and stepped back. When he turned around and walked towards the direction of the stairs, engine whirred to life right where he left Jim and sped along, but not without a loud below from Jim. “Stay warm, sweetheart,” came the loud echo in the lonely avenue, but when Spock looked back, the snow that turned to sludge was the only evidence that someone had disturbed the peace of the place.

Stalling was illogical. Spock nevertheless found himself doing so, staring at the audio-only intercom beside the door. Reasonable expectations had been established based on his previous conversation with his mother. Imagination, while not illogical, was distinctly human. Dreading —a twisting knot in his stomach — is another thing. Bracing himself, he’d push the button for number seven.

“Hello,” a male voice crackled over speaker. The audio transmission was hardly modern, but it was loud enough for Spock to hear the ambient noises in the background: the sounds of a holo-vid played in the background, partly-filled coffee mugs clinking together while the liquid sloshed around, and his mother mutedly laughing in the distance before asking, “Is that Spock? Ask if it’s Spock.”

Spock heard all of this because he has superior auditory senses than humans, but also, it’s familiar and foreign all at once, like the shrill tone of her voice, the freeness of her laughter. It disconcerted him that he has never heard this before, not after seventeen years in Vulcan. Certainly not in the past year amid the cold war in the confines of their home. When his parents argued, there was no shouting. In their room across the hall from his in their Vulcan home, Spock would hear long diatribes from his mother, passionately-spoken in a garbled voice. During those instances, his father hardly retorted. In the end, after red-rimmed eyes and stilted missives, it was his mother who talked to Spock about the separation.

Away from the intercom, the voice teasingly spoke. “You can’t just give away information like that, Mandy,” the voice said, slightly chiding.

“But you just said my name,” his mother laughed. “They got me now. I’ll have to ask the super to tighten security.”

Spock opened his mouth to speak. Closed them. A single finger was still pressed on the intercom and was glued there, but words failed to come out. Half a minute passed. Over the intercom, he heard footsteps and _What is it you want, Mary? What do you want? You want the moon? Just say the word and I'll throw a lasso around it and pull it down. Hey. That's a pretty good idea. I'll give you the moon, Mary—_

“Hello? Is anyone still there?” A pause. In his imagination, it is all too real: Spock’s mother will have been biting her lips in consternation, she would have been standing and hovering behind the man that Spock only knows by snippets from bitter conversations told hesitantly. _He’s just a friend, Spock_ , she’d say if he was there, and he objected to this stranger’s presence. He knew she would turn her friend away if Spock objected to his presence. As of the moment, he was not sure he could stop himself from selfishly asking his mother to do so. She wanted this life which she could breathe in and out, she’d said, and Spock wanted to give that to her. Fact: it’s her first Christmas on Earth and Spock suffocating presence did nothing to make anything easier for her.

“Yeah, I have one pizza delivery for a… Steve? Trevor?” Suddenly, a blonde head butted in—Jim— and spoke over the intercom. He raised a finger to his pursed lips and his eyes were trained at Spock while they await the answer.

“Uh, no, I’m sorry, I think you have the wrong unit. Mandy did you order pizza?” A muffled answer, and then, “Yeah, sorry buddy, no.” The intercom is cut off. Spock stood there for a while, staring at the intercom still, before he was quietly dragged back to the hovercar and strapped in his seat.

“Any complaints?” Jim asked, peering at him from the passenger’s seat while he adjusted Spock’s belt.  Spock shook his head. The car sped away from the silent intercom, huddled in the warmth of the car and company.


End file.
